Off-Topic

I have no idea why Noah's post was quoted, disregard that.

My group is completely rebuilding our salary structure for sales reps at my company(11 figure revenues) over the next few months, so this is kind of right up my alley. Commission %s vary a ridiculous amount based on the product. We have guys who get like 10bp on gross and others who get 2000. Obviously there are variances with base pay and benefits. Generally, if the salesman has a lot of control over the price of goods/services, it is based on margin. We have one guy who gets 5bp of total sales on top of a base/bonus. I was skimming some payroll sheets and figured it was a typo. That was a big number. I guess the point is, there is no answer to your question without knowing more details. Its more like, we figure out how much he should get paid on average, and run a regression based on product and location to figure out the base/bonus/quota/commission figures. It is by far the most interesting compensation question for a stat nerd.

I worked at CDWG (woof) for like 6 months out of college and commission was based on GP. Started at 4% of GP up to 50% of goal, then like 8% up to 100% of goal, and ultimately up to I think 18% after 100% of GP goal met. There was one guy who had been there a while and would just sell storage to the FBI, literally nothing else. End of FY he would make anywhere from $250k-$400k between August/Sept. Everyone else never came close to their goals which were inflated from pre-continuing resolution and cut back times.

enterprise software sales is secretively one of the most lucrative jobs on the planet. the goal for people in that industry is to save enough after 10 years and retire.

at CFC i got 20-100 bps of the notional. one of the lowest in the industry at the time but they did have a solid infrastructure and support/training for someone w/ no exp

Manufactured items usually have a smaller percentage ie 1-3% but that could be upped through a graduated gross sales number, ie the higher the the gross sale the higher the percentage. Also common in building products selling are SPIFFS, ie targeted products like obsolete inventory, which need to be moved and which earn a "bonus" commission.

Considering that 20% of a sales force generates 80% of sales on average, the higher the commission as a function of income the higher the income for producers.